Limitations on the number of Ministers

Published Thursday, August 10, 2017

This House of Commons Library Briefing Paper reports the legal restrictions on the number of ministers receiving a salary and the number of ministers sitting in the House of Commons. It includes statistics on the number of ministers in each Chamber following each general election since 1979. Lastly, it sets out calls from the Public Administration Select Committee and others for the number of ministers and the payroll vote to be reduced.

Legal restrictions

The House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 provides that not more than 95 holders of Ministerial offices may sit and vote in the House of Commons at any one time. There is no equivalent legal restraint on the number of Ministers in the Lords.

How many ministers are there?

The total number of ministers in government posts in June 2017, following the general election and reshuffle of Theresa May’s Government, was 118.

This was the same number as under the Cameron administration in May 2015, but more than all other post-1979 general elections bar 2010.

There are nine unpaid ministers in Theresa May’s June 2017 Government.

The Prime Minister is able to invite Ministers to attend Cabinet without making them Cabinet Ministers. There are five people in Theresa May’s June 2017 Government who attend Cabinet without being full Cabinet Ministers.

The "payroll vote"

There is no formal definition of the payroll vote. It is generally considered to refer to all those who hold a role in the administration, whether paid or unpaid. This includes senior roles, as well as more junior roles including Parliamentary Private Secretaries (PPSs).

The proportion of Members of the House of Commons who have been part of the payroll vote has varied from 19-22% between 1979 and 2017.

There have been calls for the size of the payroll vote to be limited.

Most recently, in a 2011 report, the Public Administration Select Committee noted that the proportion of those holding government posts would be exacerbated by the proposed reduction in the size of the House of Commons from 650 to 600 following the forthcoming Boundary Review. Their recommendations included cutting the number of PPSs to one per Government Department and that the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975 should be seen as imposing a strict limit on paid and unpaid ministers.